Final sprint in Election 2013

Candidates for Virginia and New Jersey governor and New York City mayor on Monday sprinted toward the finish line of Election 2013, trotting out the big names to keep their voters from getting complacent in a trio of races with clear — if not prohibitive — frontrunners.

In Virginia, home to this year’s marquee gubernatorial race, Vice President Joe Biden warned Democratic voters that the only way Republican Ken Cuccinelli could beat Democrat Terry McAuliffe is if they don’t bother to show up at the polls on Tuesday. Stumping for Cuccinelli a few hours later, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) portrayed the election as a referendum on the troubled Democratic health care law.

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Whatever dim hope Cuccinelli has of an upset rests on abysmal turnout among Democrats. For months polls have shown McAuliffe, a longtime Democratic Party fixer and businessman, leading Cuccinelli in the high single digits. So McAuliffe has had a series of high-profile surrogates vouch for him the past few weeks – President Barack Obama on Sunday, Bill and Hillary Clinton before that – to remind party that they need to finish the job.

In New Jersey, Gov. Chris Christie represents a starkly different face of the GOP. The Republican looked to be on the verge of a resounding victory in his reelection bid against Democratic opponent Barbara Buono, poised to win over independents and some Democrats in the deep-blue state.

Cuccinelli, meanwhile, has made little effort to soften his conservative edges in a bid for moderates and independents, instead betting that GOP voters will go to the polls in droves and Democrats will not.

“This is the first election in America since the full impact of Obamacare has been felt,” Rubio told around 200 Republicans packed into a conference center for a noontime rally in the Washington exurb of Warrenton, Va. “This is the first chance for people to speak clearly at the ballot box about the impact this law is having on their lives and on our economy.”

“That health care law will only get worse,” he added. “The web site is just the tip of the iceberg.”

Rubio, wearing a shirt and tie with no jacket, ended his 6-minute speech in Spanish by encouraging Latinos to vote for Cuccinelli.

The two appeared together again in Culpeper, Va., where Obamacare was again the main focus — including in Cuccinelli’s closing argument.

“Tomorrow Virginia is the next battleground in America on Obamacare,” Cuccinelli said. “So tomorrow let’s send them a message loud and clear: Virginia says no to Obamacare. And Virginia says no to expanding Obamacare.”

McAuliffe kicked off the morning in Annandale, another Washington suburb, with Biden. The vice president cast the election as a choice between common-sense centrism and tea party extremism.

Polls show McAuliffe leading in the Virginia race, which is by far the most competitive contest in the off-season cycle. A Quinnipiac poll out Monday showed McAuliffe besting Cuccinelli by 6 percentage points, 46-40 percent. But McAuliffe and Biden warned Democrats against getting comfortable.

“There’s only one place the tea party can compete with us,” Biden said. “And that is, they do turn out their base, they do turn out those who share those views out of the ’30s and ’40s and ’50s. That’s what it is. Don’t take this for granted.”

McAuliffe boomed, “If mainstream Virginians from both parties don’t turn out to vote, you’re letting the tea party decide Virginia’s future. That’s why I need your help more than ever. Get. Out. The votes.”

Biden pegged the race as a contest between moderates and “the forces and faces of the new Republican tea party — a tea party whose social recidivism is only outgunned by its hostility to science and technology and innovation and scholarship.”

A day earlier, President Barack Obama stumped for McAuliffe in Arlington, Va., another D.C. suburb.

On Monday afternoon McAuliffe was slated for a get-out-the-vote event in Richmond with Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.).

Cuccinelli is crisscrossing the state Monday, making six stops to touch each of the commonwealth’s media markets. He began early at the Winchester airport and will spend the afternoon in Culpeper, Charlottesville and Virginia Beach. He wraps up the day at a late night rally with Ron Paul, the former Texas congressman and libertarian icon, in Richmond.

In the Garden State, four polls out Monday morning showed Christie, a possible presidential contender, leading by between 19 and 36 percentage points. Christie began his final day with a string of stops through central New Jersey, with New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez alongside him at most of them.

At a pastry shop in Hillside, the two governors and Christie’s wife, Mary Pat, were mobbed by a crowd that had stood outside for an hour in the cold waiting for his campaign bus.

“Tomorrow night the whole country is looking to New Jersey for leadership,” he said. He boasted that he’d asked no one other than Rudy Giuliani and Martinez, who he called a blue state chief executive who governs similarly to him, into the Garden State.

Pressed by reporters about what that lesson in leadership was, especially in contrast to the GOP fortunes in Virginia, Christie said it was clear that government in New Jersey was working for the people.

Asked if he thinks his own brand of Republicanism is waning, Christie looked around at the packed shop.

“I don’t know, does it look like it’s waning?” he said.

Later, at a stop at the Monmouth County GOP headquarters in his hero Bruce Springsteen’s hometown of Freehold, Christie praised Republicans in the state who weren’t afraid to criticize House Republicans during the effort to get Hurricane Sandy federal aide.

In a veiled contrast to other national Republicans, Christie added, “We’re gonna give you a campaign that’s not based upon anger but based upon hope” and will make New Jersey residents proud.

Everywhere he went, he was swamped for autographs.

Liberal New York looked poised to elect Democrat Bill de Blasio by sweeping margins over GOP contender Joe Lhota, which would give New York City its first elected Democratic mayor since 1989. In Alabama, a primary run-off appeared to be a narrow contest between Bradley Byrne, a contender with support from the business community and congressional leadership, versus the firebrand tea partier Dean Young.

In Virginia, both McAuliffe and Cuccinelli have packed Election Day schedules. McAuliffe’s begins at 5:15 A.M. with a stop in Woodbridge, Va., followed by 6:30 A.M. voting in McLean, outside Washington and stops in Fairfax, Chesterfield, Norfolk and Portsmouth before returning to Northern Virginia for his Election Night event.

Cuccinelli is expected to cast his vote in Nokesville, Va., near Manassas, followed by a series of stops across the state. His campaign will wrap up at an event in Richmond.